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Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:50:00 -0800

Star Trek-Style “Phaser” Paralyzes Worms With a UV Blast | 80beats

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:09:34 -0800

Feel like teaching a lesson to that pinhead-sized worm that’s been bothering you? According to a study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a material called dithienylethene plus a blast of UV light can stop a worm in the midst of its worming, rendering it temporarily paralyzed.

The researchers fed a light-sensitive material — a “photoswitch” known as dithienylethene — to the transparent worms. When exposed to ultraviolet rays, the molecule turned blue and the worms became paralyzed. Using visible light instead made the chemical turn colorless and the paralysis ended [LiveScience]. Scientists aren’t sure why the transparent nematodes became paralyzed, but they know dithienylethene changes shapes and suspect it interferes with the worm’s energy-producing metabolic pathways. Repeated cycles of UV-induced paralysis actually killed some of the worms.

Unsurprisingly, news of this worm stun-gun led to longing for Star Trek-style phasers, and the scientists, though skeptical, were good sports about it. As lead researcher Neil Branda said tactfully: “I’m not convinced there’s a legitimate use of turning organisms on and off in terms of paralysis, but until somebody tells me otherwise, I’m not going to say that there isn’t an application” [BBC News].

But while phasers remain a fantasy, light-activated materials certainly have a future in medical research. Light-activated drugs could be used to activate tumour-killing drugs once they reach a particular location in the body. Similar chemicals have been used before, but have required a steady supply of light – often harmful UV bandwidths – to stay active. The new compounds, known as diarylethenes, could be more useful because they can be switched on and off with a single light pulse, Branda says [New Scientist].

Image: Wiki Commons / Yonatanh

Beam Circulating in LHC Again! | Cosmic Variance

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:43:19 -0800

09:37 PST: Like many of my colleagues, I’ve been eagerly awaiting word that the LHC has successfully threaded the proton beam around the whole ring. In recent days they have gotten it half way around the 27 km circumference, and within hours, they should be able to circulate it and I assume “capture” it with the RF, which creates stable bunches in the synchrotron. Everything has gone very smoothly to this point, so I expect success shortly!

Once beam has circulated stably in both rings, some time next week the LHC team will attempt to collide protons at the injection energy of 450 GeV (a total center of mass energy of 900 GeV). While this is much less than the Tevatron is colliding presently, it could provide some sorely needed initial data for the detectors to do timing and calibration of the various subsystems. There will even hopefully be a few collision events recorded with clear “dijet” structure – collisions where quarks and/or gluons inside the protons hit head on and effectively bounce sideways into the detector, giving two back-to-back collimated sprays of particles. Pictures of such events will be great to see, at long last!

You can follow progress live on twitter: http://twitter.com/cern and I will update this post as I learn more.

10:32 PST: The LHC has gotten beam around clockwise, to Point 6! Woo hoo!

10:45 PST: Magnet quench – should be recovered soon…

11:25 PST: Beam has reached Point 7!

11:30 PST: Point 8! Next beam will be sent past Point 1 where ATLAS is…

11:39 PST Beam all the way around the ring! WOO HOO!! It’s baaaaaack! The LHC Page 1 display shows that the injection probe beam made it more than once around the machine:

11:54 PST: Next goals: do the same with the counterclockwise beam. Will they attempt RF capture tonight? Trying to find out…

13:11 PST: Turns out (no pun intended) they decided to go for RF capture of the clockwise beam rather than probe counterclockwise. They are up to 10 million turns with the RF on! Fantastic!

13:30 PST: Having captured the beam for several minutes, the LHC will now switch to counterclockwise.

14:53 PST: About to go for a full orbit of the counterclockwise beam…done!! Now to RF capture!

15:30 PST: Counterclockwise beam is RF captured! The LHC is operational…colliding beams within a week? Stay tuned.

ZOMG! Get These iPhone Apps Right Meow! | Discoblog

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:45:44 -0800

It’s Friday at last. So to help you goof off and avoid work, we bring you a double dose of time vampire iPhone apps.

First up, for the cat lovers out there who tragically don’t have any cats, comes CatPaint, a $0.99 app that lets you add images of cats to pics that you’ve snapped with your iPhone.

via MacWorld:

Davander Mobile has launched CatPaint, an app that lets you add cuteness—in feline form—to any photo on your iPhone or iPod touch. You grab a photo, choose a kitten, and then tap to place it anywhere within the image.

But the makers of the add-a-cat app must have realized that it’s possible to get carried away by your enthusiasm in such a situation. CatPaint uses the iPhone’s accelerometer as a delete function: Shake gently to remove the most recently added cat, or shake violently to purge all felines from the image.

From one internet meme to an app that incorporates them all—teh internets. Brace yourself for a lolpocalypse, according to their description on YouTube:

THE MOST EXCITING IPHONE GAME EVER! Coming soon (already submitted to the App Store) to the iPhone or iPod Touch. A (cyber)space shooter of epic proportions. Collect lolcats, dodge popups, feed trolls, avoid viruses, break through firewalls. It’s EPIC.

Peep the trailer below:

k thx bai!

Image: CatPaint
Video: YouTube / insurgentgames

IBM’s Billion-Neuron Simulation Can Match a Cat’s Brainpower | 80beats

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:52:56 -0800

An artificial brain as powerful as a human’s remains a distant goal, but scientists are inching closer. This week IBM announced that by using a brain-simulating algorithm called BlueMatter, researchers created an artificial brain simulation that packs more brainpower than a cat.

Researchers used an IBM supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore Lab to model the movement of data through a structure with 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses, which allowed them to see how information “percolates” through a system that’s comparable to a feline cerebral cortex [San Jose Mercury News]. The team’s previous effort two years ago, modeled after a rat brain, simulated only about 55 million neurons.

The staggering surge in computing power has engineers like IBM’s Dharmendra Modha drooling over the possibilities for more brain-like computers. By reverse engineering [the] cortical structure, Modha says, researchers could give machines the ability to interpret biological senses such as sight, hearing and touch. And artificial machine brains could process, intelligently, senses that don’t currently exist in the natural world, such as radar and laser range-finding [Popular Mechanics].

It should come as no surprise that the design suggests such military applications, as DARPA provided much of the funding. But like the Internet and other technologies originally developed for the military, BlueMatter’s abilities could lead in a multitude of directions. “As our digital and physical worlds collide, there is a tsunami of information,” Modha said. “There is a need for a new kind of intelligence that can sort through, prioritize and extract the most important information, much like how the brain deals with sight, sounds, tastes, touch and smell” [San Jose Mercury News].

Image: IBM Almaden research lab, Stanford University

So Long, Colostomy Bag: British Man Gets Remote-Controlled Sphincter | Discoblog

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:15:40 -0800

Briton Ged Galvin survived that vicious car wreck that nearly took his life. Unfortunately, the accident crushed some of his organs and left him needing a colostomy bag to go to the bathroom.

That was until his doctors created his cyborg sphincter. Yes, you read that correctly. Doctors removed muscle from above Galvin’s knee, wrapped it around his damaged sphincter, and attached electrodes to the nerves. Now, when Galvin goes to the bathroom he simply presses a button on a remote control.

From The Telegraph:

Mr Galvin, who had previously endured the indignity of carrying a colostomy bag, added: “I thought that in these days of modern medicine surely there was something they could do. They’d mended everything else – why not this? Anything was better than a colostomy bag.

“The operation changed my life and gave me back my pride and confidence. Because of the remote control I can lead a normal life again.”

Outstanding. Though hopefully Galvin’s remote has a lock that prevents him from accidentally triggering it while it’s in his pocket.

Image: Anna Lythgoe/SWNS.COM

NASA Invites You to “Be a Martian” & Explore the Red Planet’s Terrain | 80beats

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:05:02 -0800

With NASA’s manned space flight program in tumult, it’s an open question when/if human boots will tramp on Martian soil. But the space agency has provided a virtual way for humans to explore the red planet, with its new “Be a Martian” program.

The online project, a collaboration between NASA and Microsoft, enlists the power of crowdsourcing. Users are invited to sort through the hundreds of thousands of photos of Mars that have been sent back by rovers and orbiters. To convince people to spend hours pouring over pictures of dusty Martian landscapes, two tasks have been set up as games where participants can win points and badges. One game asks people to count craters in photos of Mars; the other asks people to match small, high-res photos of the Martian surface with their corresponding locations on a low-res photo taken from a higher altitude [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]. (You’ll need to have Microsoft’s Silverlight application for the games and videos on the site to work.)

By enlisting citizen scientists, NASA hopes to both interest students in space careers and to make real progress in Martian research. “We really need the next generation of explorers,” says Michelle Viotti, from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which oversees Mars missions. “And we’re also accomplishing something important for Nasa. There’s so much data coming back from Mars. Having a wider crowd look at the data, classify it and help understand its meaning is very important” [BBC News].

Image: JPL / Microsoft

Computer Glitch Delays Airline Flights Around the Country | 80beats

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:14:56 -0800

Air travelers around the country saw their flights delayed this morning, thanks to a computer glitch. The problem, which occured [sic] in the Atlanta-based computer system that provides data about flight plans, has forced air controllers to input the information manually, said Arlene Salac, FAA spokeswoman in New York [Reuters].

The Federal Aviation Administration tried to assure travelers that the problem wasn’t a safety concern; rather it fouled up ground stops and caused delays. The problems began a little after 5 a.m. Eastern time, and hit Atlanta’s busy airport the hardest. One passenger said that a Delta Air Lines gate agent had announced that the glitch prevented pilots from accessing flight plans, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported [The New York Times].

The computer problem has been fixed, though FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said she doesn’t know how many flights have been affected [MSNBC]. And today’s glitch was the second such one in 15 months.

Image: flickr/ eschipul

Scientist Smackdown: Are a Sprinter’s Prostethic Legs an Unfair Advantage? | 80beats

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:59:16 -0800

If you read this blog last week, you might have seen us cover a study suggesting that South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius ought to be allowed to compete in the same track and field events as everyone else because his prosthetic legs confer no advantage over a sprinter with biological legs. But if you saw a study cited by the Associated Press and many other publications yesterday, you might think that Pistorius would soon be banned from competitions, because his “blades” let him swing his legs far faster than even the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt. So what the heck is going on?

The AP’s study isn’t actually a “study,” per se. Rather, what the Journal of Applied Physiology published was a point-counterpoint (pdf), now freely available for anyone to read. In in, Peter Weyand and Matthew Bundle argue that Pistorius’ prosthetics are a huge advantage, particularly in what matters most: how fast he can move his legs. Weyand and Bundle say that the lightweight blades allow Pistorius “to reposition his limbs 15.7 percent more rapidly than five of the most recent former world-record holders in the 100-meter dash” [AP].

There is, however, a counterpoint to this argument in the journal piece that yesterday’s news reports neglected, coauthored by Alena Grabowski of the MIT Media Lab (who led the research on Pistorius’ blades that 80beats covered last week). Her team has found that the limiting factor determining an athlete’s top speed was how hard the foot or prosthesis hit the ground. Their study showed this “ground force” was around 9% lower in the prosthetic limb versus the unaffected leg [The Guardian]. Grabowski’s research focused on professional runners with only one prosthetic leg.

No matter, Weyand and Bundle say in a rebuttal to the counterpoint: because Pistorius swings his legs so quickly (about .28 seconds per leg, as opposed to the .36 seconds of world-class sprinters with biological legs), he needs 20 percent less ground force than an ordinary runner would to maintain the same speed. Weyand told DISCOVER that the MIT team’s research is probably correct about speed and power when it comes to runners with only one prosthetic. “One limb can’t go faster than the other,” or the runner would go in a circle. But a runner like Pistorius with two prosthetics can learn to swing both legs at the “off-the-charts” speed of .28 seconds, he says, gaining a clear advantage.

Grabowski was understandably miffed at her side’s counterargument being left out of news reports. “We’re all sort of shaking our heads,” she said. She also questioned the validity of Weyand and Bundle’s findings, saying in an email to DISCOVER that they represent an opinion and not a peer-reviewed study, that they don’t consider the starting blocks and turning inherent in a 400-meter race, and Weyand and Bundle’s assertion that Pistorius’ blades take 10 seconds off his 400-meter time “is ridiculous and not based on data.”

But, Weyand tells DISCOVER, he and Bundle got their data during direct observations of Pistorius last year, during the time he was attempting to qualify for the Beijing Olympics. At that time they arrived at the same kind of conclusion Grabowski’s side has arrived at now—that the sprinter ought not be banned. The reason for this odd twist in the story, Weyand says, is that he and Bundle were brought in by Pistorius’ law firm during a hearing last May on the question of whether to overturn a ban on Pistorius, but the hearing could only consider the evidence used to enact the ban in the first place. So, Weyand tells DISCOVER, he and Bundle’s were advocating analysis suggested the ban be overturned because its basis was shoddy insufficient scientific evidence, and at the same time their own studies convinced them that he did have a clear advantage.

To make this affair even stranger, both sides—Weyand and Bundle’s team, and Grabowski’s—all co-authored a less controversial paper earlier this year in the same journal. However, Bundle tells DISCOVER, they left the question of advantage or no advantage out of that paper because they couldn’t agree, and published this point-counterpoint instead. “The comparisons and analysis that Peter and I present in the point-counterpoint are novel, in part because our co-authors prevented them from being included in the manuscript that appeared in June,” he says. As for peer review, Bundle says his argument did receive this treatment, because the journal’s standards consider the editors’ approval of an article to be an appropriate review.

This scientist smackdown isn’t going away: Grabowski told DISCOVER she would issue a press release in response to Weyand and Bundle’s, and continue her prosthesis research. Though if there’s one thing both sides can agree on, it’s that Pistorius is a remarkable athlete, advantage or not. “What he does as an athletic feat is really an amazing thing,” Weyand says.

Related Content:
80beats: Prosthetic Legs Aren’t Better Than the Real Thing… Yet
80beats: Scientist Smackdown: All Our Stories of Lively Scientific Debate
80beats: Toddler Gets a Telescoping, Prosthetic Arm Bone That Grows With Him
Science Not Fiction: Dr. Terminator: The Prosthetics Designer Who Makes Sci-Fi Sculptures

Image: flickr/Elvar Freyr

Bomb-Proof Your House With the World’s Toughest Wallpaper | Discoblog

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:33:46 -0800

For the home security buff who has everything, here comes X-Flex blast protection wallpaper.

According to Popular Science:

X-Flex is a new kind of wallpaper: one that’s quite possibly stronger than the wall it’s on. Invented by Berry Plastics in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, this lifesaving adhesive is designed for use anyplace that’s prone to blasts and other lethal forces, like in war or natural-disaster zones, chemical plants or airports.

The super-strength stuff can keep walls from collapsing after an impact, and also prevents debris from exploding inward into the room. The wallpaper comes in a roll with a sticky backing; for some counter-insurgency home decorating, you simply remove the backing and press the sheets to the walls. In less than an hour, an entire room can be covered.

X-Flex manufacturer, Berry Plastics, plans to release a commercial version soon, which could actually be very useful if you happen to live in a hurricane zone.

To see how X-Flex holds up, PopSci gave the wallpaper the old wrecking ball test. See the video here.

Image: iStockphoto

iPhone Blower App for Those Too Lazy to Exhale | Discoblog

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:21:50 -0800

Because using your lungs to blow air is waaay too much work, a new iPhone app will do it for you.

According to Mashable:

The iPhone app is called Blower and it works by moving air through the speakers of your iPhone (strictly speaking, the same thing happens when you play music through those speakers, but let’s not be too harsh on the novelty part of the application).

Check out the app in action:

Or you can use it to blow away “herbs.”

This actually seems like a lot more work than just, you know, breathing on the candles, or dragging your hand across the table. Whatever, it’s only $0.99.

Video: YouTube / QneoDotNet

AT&T and Verizon Wireless Take Their Cat Fight to Court | 80beats

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:33:52 -0800

Have you seen those Verizon Wireless ads on TV, showing a map of the company’s 3G network coverage next to a far less inspiring map of competitor AT&T’s coverage? Those ads have now led the nation’s two largest mobile provides to a court fight.

Verizon’s “There’s a Map for That” campaign spoofs the “There’s an App for That” campaign by Apple, whose iPhone uses AT&T. In response to the Verizon campaign, AT&T filed suit against Verizon in federal court. AT&T claims the ad is misleading because it implies that AT&T customers can’t use their phones and cannot access the mobile Internet in areas where the carrier does not offer 3G wireless coverage. The truth is that AT&T customers can use their phones and they are able to access the wireless Net using the company’s slower EDGE network [CNET].

In response to AT&T’s initial complaint, Verizon tweaked the wording and the fine print on the ads to try to cover the company’s bases. But it says it won’t make further changes. “We stand behind our advertising. If they [AT&T] have a better map, we’d certainly like to see it. It’s clearly an accurate representation of our 3G coverage” [Atlanta Journal-Constitution], a Verizon spokesperson said, and then the company lawyers submitted a bitter legal response (pdf) to the suit. In Verizon’s reponse, the company says that “AT&T sued because Verizon’s ads are true and the truth hurts.”

Depending on a judge’s interpretation, AT&T might be able to show that the ads are misleading. But that will take time. As Verizon points out in its response, AT&T hasn’t exactly shown that there’s an emergency that would require the ads to come down immediately, so it seems that these ads will remain on TV for the foreseeable future [Ars Technica].

Related Content:
80beats: Sorry, Australian iPhone Users: You’ve Been Rickrolled
Discoblog: Can an iPhone App Decipher Your Baby’s Cries?
The Intersection: Droid 2.0 vs. iPhone

Image: flickr / William Hook

How to Build a Whizbang Chicken Plucker From a Washing Machine | Discoblog

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:26:38 -0800

With Turkey Day right around the corner, you don’t want to be caught with an unplucked bird. And who has the money to buy a plucker?

The solution? Build a chicken plucker out of your washing machine!

From the Annals of Improbable Research:

A Whizbang plucker will pick the feathers off chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese in a matter of seconds. Every component needed to make the machine is thoroughly discussed and the construction process is carefully detailed, step by step. There are 62 clear drawings…. Commercial tub pluckers cost $2,000+ but this book tells the reader how to build a comparable unit for $500 or less.

A bizarre trend of DIY chicken plucker videos has emerged on YouTube. Must be the tough economy. WARNING: If you’ve never seen a chicken plucked, it may seem a little disturbing. The chicken is already dead, but still…

Image: Whizbang Books

Pepper Spray & Cocaine Could Be a Lethal Combo | 80beats

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:00:27 -0800

Cocaine combined with capsaicin, an active ingredient in pepper spray, can be deadly, if research in mice is any indication.

In the early 1990s, anecdotes of people dying after being doused with pepper spray puzzled researchers, until autopsies revealed many were on cocaine at the time. To look for a link between the two substances, a research team injected cocaine, capsaicin or both at once into the abdomens of several groups of about 30 mice. Injections allowed them to control the dose of capsaicin the mice received, which wouldn’t have been possible if the mice were simply sprayed [New Scientist]. Equal doses of cocaine plus capsaicin killed about half the mice, compared to cocaine alone, which killed just a few. And a dose of cocaine high enough to kill half the mice on its own killed up to 90 percent when combined with capsaicin.

The researchers admit they don’t really know how capsaicin and cocaine combine to make a lethal cocktail, but their research shows an interesting correlation. During their research, they reviewed 26 autopsy reports and Californian police reports between 1993 and 1995 of people who died shortly after being subdued with pepper spray. They noted that 19 of them had evidence of psychostimulants in their blood and nine had cocaine. [The team] suspects that a fatal interaction takes place in the brain between capsaicin and psychostimulants [New Scientist].

Toxicologists not involved with the research say the results are certainly curious, but of course more research is necessary before jumping to conclusions. For one, the mice were injected with capsaicin while humans inhale pepper spray, so it’s not clear how much capsaicin is absorbed into a person’s bloodstream. Despite not knowing the underlying mechanism, scientists say their research, published in the journal Forensic Toxicology, suggests that police forces may need to rethink their use of pepper spray as a non-lethal weapon.

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Stefan Kühn

Japanese Subs Discovered… 6 Decades After U.S. Intentionally Sank Them | 80beats

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:04:15 -0800

Americans scientists have rediscovered the remains of two advanced Japanese submarines from World War II, buried in the waters off Hawaii. But these shipwrecks, the I-14 and I-201, aren’t relics of a great Pacific Theater battle. Rather, the U.S. captured and then sank them on purpose, along with three others Japanese ships including the gargantuan I-401, which was found back in 2005.

The I-401, along with the I-14 and I-201, were captured at war’s end and sailed to Hawaii, where US naval intelligence officers could plumb the ships’ secrets…. All were scuttled to avoid having to share the information with the Pacific war’s late-comer and co-claimant to such prizes, the former Soviet Union [Christian Science Monitor].

The United States was extra anxious to bury these boats because they were among the most sophisticated of the era. The I-201 attack sub was twice as fast as any in the American fleet. The I-14 was slower, but packed lethal cargo. Specifically designed for a stealth attack on the U.S. East Coast—perhaps targeting Washington, D.C., and New York City—the “samurai subs” were fast, far-ranging, and in some cases carried folding-wing aircraft [National Geographic News]. However, the two subs were commissioned at the end of the war, and never saw battle. The I-14 was also the forerunner of Japan’s I-400 series, which could travel around the world one and a half times without refueling.

Japan wasn’t sprinting toward naval superiority in every capacity—its radar still lagged behind U.S. technology at the end of WWII. But had the war not concluded in 1945, the Allies might have gotten a taste of Japan’s new naval prowess. “What really jumps out is these three submarines [found so far] represent quite an advanced concept of military technology that was ahead of its time,” said archaeologist Hans Van Tilburg of NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries [Los Angeles Times].

Image: Wild Life Productions

Mars Rover Will Try Daring Escape From Sand Trap of Doom | 80beats

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:27:13 -0800

It’s a terrible thing to have a spirit that is trapped, bogged down, unable to reach its true potential. Just ask NASA–the space agency knows all about it. The Mars rover Spirit has been stuck in the sand since April 23rd, when it drove backwards into a pit of soft sand and came to a dead halt. Since then, NASA engineers have been testing out escape strategies with a mock-up rover and a sandbox in California, and today they announced that they’re ready to begin a careful operation that they hope will extricate the rover. The name of the project: Free Spirit.

Spirit and its partner rover have been exploring Mars for more than five years now, but this sandy area, dubbed Troy, could be the end of the road for Spirit. “If it cannot make the great escape from this sand trap, it’s likely that this lonely spot straddling the edge of this crater might be where Spirit ends its adventures on Mars,” said Doug McCuistion, who heads the Mars exploration program [AP].

On Monday, Spirit’s handlers will send the first commands to the rover. Over days, weeks, and months they’ll order it to slowly rotate its five working wheels and inch back along the path it came in on. Efforts to extract Spirit will continue until at least February. If the rover is not free by then, a review panel may decide whether it’s worth it to keep on trying, McCuistion said [AP]. But even if Spirit is stuck for all time, it may still be able to contribute to our scientific understanding of the Red Planet by studying its soil and atmosphere.

Image: JPL / NASA

Analyzing the Smell of an Old Book to Give It a Checkup | 80beats

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:17:36 -0800

The nose knows when you’ve walked into a library or archive populated by books of a certain age: The distinctive musty smell of the old paper fills the halls and reading rooms. Now, for a study in Analytical Chemistry, a research team has analyzed the chemicals that combine to form the “old book smell,” and says that one day a book’s odor could tell scholars a lot about the tome’s history.

The international research team, led by Matija Strlic from University College London’s Centre for Sustainable Heritage, describes that smell as “a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness. This unmistakable smell is as much part of the book as its contents,” they wrote in the journal article [BBC News]. The smell is a result of volatile organic compounds that are released as the paper ages.

After watching conservators smell the paper while investigating old books, Strlic applied a “sniff test” based on gas chromotography-mass spectrometry to sort out the chemicals mingling in the odors of 72 older documents. The researchers identified 15 organic compounds that made good markers to track the condition of books [Scientific American]. The system isn’t ready for librarians or conservators yet, but Strlic says he envisions a hand-held model they could use to analyze the age of a book, or what materials constitute its pages and binding, in a noninvasive way. Currently, age-testing a book usually requires snipping off pieces for testing.

The sooner the better, because books aren’t forever. Paper produced until about 1850 was made to last for millenniums. The development of new wood-pulping techniques in the middle of the 19th century and the use of rosin sizing reduced the longevity of paper. The acidity of paper made with these techniques causes them to degrade more quickly than the older papers — or newer ones made with different methods after 1990 [Wired.com].

Related Content:
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80beats: In Controversial Scent Lineups, A Dog’s Nose Picks Out the Perp
80beats: Ant’s Chemical Signal Tells Nest Mates, “I’m Not Dead Yet.”
The Intersection: On Books, in which DISCOVER blogger Sheril Kirshenbaum sings the praises of that old book smell.

Image: flickr / Guldfisken

In the Commute of the Future, Drivers Can Let a Pro Take the Wheel | 80beats

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:32:17 -0800

The European Union has contracted an engineering firm to develop a public transportation system that doesn’t require users to leave their cars. The British consultancy Ricardo will work to develop a system that allows drivers to surrender control of their vehicles, and the company plans to test the system on public roads within the decade. It all sounds highly fanciful, but the firm insists it is a genuine attempt to build so-called “road trains”, whereby various cars or other vehicles travel in convoy with only the one at the front steering. Big names, such as Volvo, have also signed up [London Times]. The project has been dubbed Sartre, for Safe Road Trains for the Environment. Basically, a lead car, driven by a professional driver, will travel down the highway and other cars can fall in behind and turn the driving over to the lead car. Cars would be able to enter and exit the platoon at any time by sending a signal to the lead car.

Ricardo officials speculated that those joining a platoon or road train may one day pay for the privilege of someone else effectively driving them closer to their destination [BBC News]. The benefits of road trains extend beyond being able to sing along to the radio or eat breakfast in the privacy of your car. According to earlier research, fuel consumption could be cut by 20 percent because cars wouldn’t waste energy on abrupt braking or acceleration, and also because cars traveling close together would experience less air drag. Also, road capacity will increase at the same time that accidents from distracted or drowsy drivers decrease [Wired.com].

The Sarte development project will run for three years, and towards the end they will begin testing their convoys on private road tracks. Eventually they plan to start public road trials in Spain, which would consist of two- or three-car road trains. Click here for a schematic of how the road trains would work.

Image: flickr / Nrbelex

How to Prevent Heart Hackers From Turning Off Pacemakers | 80beats

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:21:33 -0800

Many medical devices come equipped with wireless communication systems these days, allowing doctors to customize their operations or to see their patents’ information. But fitting pacemakers or implanted defibrillators with WiFi also opens the door to hackers‘ attacks. Hackers could potentially steal personal information, remotely drain batteries, or cause a dangerous malfunction, so researchers are working on ways to block them. The approach relies on using ultrasound waves to determine the exact distance between a medical device and the wireless reader attempting to communicate with it [Technology Review]. The plan is to only allow access to a medical device from wireless reading devices within 10 feet, and only then after a series of authentication steps. However, in the event of an emergency, the medical device would grant access to anyone within a few inches of the device. In other words, to anyone close enough to assist.

The research team also has to consider how much power their security measures will drain from the devices, which is a not-so-trivial point for a battery-operated pacemaker. But Claude Castelluccia, who was involved with designing the security system, said that because the device won’t respond to requests that come from outside the predetermined distance, it would also be harder for an attacker to wear down the battery by forcing it to process one request after another [Technology Review]. To test their system, researchers recently implanted a medical device in the stomach of a cow, and they’re currently shopping their patented technology to potential developers.

Image: flickr / library_mistress

Spacecraft That Sails on Sunshine Aims for Lift-Off in 2010 | 80beats

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:30:19 -0800

It was a fitting tribute to Carl Sagan’s imagination, optimism, and starry-eyed wonder. On Monday, which would have been Sagan’s 75th birthday, the Planetary Society announced that it is pushing ahead with a plan for experimental spacecraft that will ride on sunbeams, powered by solar sails. The first small craft will be sent into orbit in 2010, if all goes well, and will be followed by two others, which may venture farther. Sagan was a founder of the Planetary Society and a big booster of solar sail plans.

Solar sail technology, which has not yet been tested in space, relies on the tiny impacts created by the light particles streaming from the sun as they hit a reflective surface. The force on a solar sail is gentle, if not feeble, but unlike a rocket, which fires for a few minutes at most, it is constant. Over days and years a big enough sail, say a mile on a side, could reach speeds of hundreds of thousands of miles an hour, fast enough to traverse the solar system in 5 years. Riding the beam from a powerful laser, a sail could even make the journey to another star system in 100 years, that is to say, a human lifespan [The New York Times].

The spacecraft that is scheduled for orbit in 2010, the LightSail-1, has been made possible by an anonymous donation to the Planetary Society. The recent donation reinvigorates the Society’s solar sail hopes, which were dashed in 2005 when the Russian Volna rocket carrying its first solar sail prototype, Cosmos 1, failed to reach orbit…. In addition to the Cosmos 1 disappointment, NASA’s NanoSail-D attempt was lost in the third failed flight of SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket in 2008 [SPACE.com].

Image: The Planetary Society

Rule #1 for Carrying Nuclear Secrets: Don’t Leave Laptop in Hotel Room | Discoblog

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:13:09 -0800

Seriously, shouldn’t government officials who are involved in clandestine activities be forced to sit through Computer Security 101?

According to a new report, a Syrian official displayed remarkable ignorance of best security practices while staying in a posh London hotel in 2006. The official was being watched by the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, on suspicion that he knew something about a secret nuclear reactor in the Syrian desert at a site called the Al Kibar complex. When the Syrian stepped out of his hotel room and left his laptop behind, the Israeli agents got the opening they needed.

From Der Spiegel’s excellent investigative report:

Israeli agents took the opportunity to install a so-called “Trojan horse” program, which can be used to secretly steal data, onto the Syrian’s laptop.

The hard drive contained construction plans, letters and hundreds of photos. The photos, which were particularly revealing, showed the Al Kibar complex at various stages in its development. At the beginning — probably in 2002, although the material was undated — the construction site looked like a treehouse on stilts, complete with suspicious-looking pipes leading to a pumping station at the Euphrates. Later photos show concrete piers and roofs, which apparently had only one function: to modify the building so that it would look unsuspicious from above.

Based on the laptop data and other evidence, Der Spiegel’s report claims, Israeli planes bombed the alleged nuclear site in 2007.

The hard drive also had a snapshot of the head of Syria’s Atomic Energy Commission standing next to one of the leading members of the North Korean nuclear program, an engineer who is believed to be the mastermind behind North Korea’s plutonium reactor. Which leads to rule #2: when violating international treaties, aim for black ops, not photo ops.

Image: iStockphoto

Prepare to Be Amazed… An iPhone App That Can Read Minds! | Discoblog

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:09:08 -0800

Stare into the backlit screen of the magic iPhone as Irene’s Spirit reveals the unknown… This spooky new app claims to have the power to bring messages from the spirit world.

OK, so this is obviously a trick. But can anyone out there explain to us how this bit of wizardry actually works? If you’ve plunked down the $1.99 for the app, please clue us in.

Also, please tell me that if you ask, “Where is my bike?”, Irene tells you to look in the basement of the Alamo.

UPDATE: The developer’s of Irene’s Spirit were kind enough to let us preview the app. I’ll just say that like any illusion, Irene’s Spirit runs on showmanship, slight of hand, and a little knowledge about your audience.

From one of our tweeps, @carolyn_w: Ok here’s a hint. “Irene” reads minds about as well as the person who is using/controlling the app.

Video: YouTube / Irenesspirit

Who Needs Sunglasses? New Contact Lenses Respond to Light | 80beats

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:22:47 -0800

Contact lenses provide a number of convenience advantages over glasses, but one they come up short in one area—you can’t get contacts that automatically adjust to the sun’s UV light and darken, like the photochromic lenses many bespectacled people enjoy. But that could soon change: Researchers in Singapore led by Jackie Ying have now created a contact lens that responds to UV light.

Transition lenses for glasses are coated with a dye that is transparent when out of the sun, but responds to UV light by changing shape and darkening. Few previous attempts have been made to design transition contact lenses, largely because it’s difficult to apply dye coatings uniformly to the delicate, soft surface of a contact lens. Ying and her colleagues got around this by developing a contact lens that embeds dyes uniformly throughout the material [Technology Review].

The scientists crafted their contacts with a structure that includes nano-sized tunnels to hold the dye. The lens’ porous structure allows the dye to change shape quickly, which team member Edwin Chow says reduces response time. “When your car suddenly goes into a tunnel, the amount of light is very dim, so you need your lenses to transform back immediately,” says Chow. [Technology Review].

First things first: the team tested its lenses on rabbits to make sure they were bio-compatible, and tests continue test to make sure the lenses don’t leak dye. However, there’s no word yet on whether near-sighted rabbits prefer contacts to glasses.

Image: Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology

Japan Pushes Forward on Plans for a Giant Solar Power Farm in Space | 80beats

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:13:41 -0800

Refusing to cave to the “that’s far too crazy to ever work” crowd, Japan took a step forward this week in the country’s scheme to develop a giant solar power station in Earth orbit. JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, selected major Japanese firms like Mitsubishi Electric, Fujitsu, and Sharp to help develop the gargantuan project.

JAXA wants a system that can produce 1 gigawatt of electricity by 2030, and at one-sixth the cost Japan currently pays for electricity. The solar cells would capture the solar energy, which is at least five times stronger in space than on Earth, and beam it down to the ground through clusters of lasers or microwaves. These would be collected by gigantic parabolic antennae, likely to be located in restricted areas at sea or on dam reservoirs [AFP]. There the energy would be converted to electricity.

Japan isn’t alone; California utility Pacific Gas & Electric asked for regulatory approval of a similar project in April, though both schemes must confront a mountain of challenges. Sending equipment up to space is one. Operating and maintaining the system cost effectively is another. How about minimizing losses during conversion and transmission of energy [Greentech Media]?

And even if space solar power works, proponents might need to hire some talented public relations professionals: JAXA said the technology would be safe but conceded it might have to dispel fears of laser beams from above roasting birds or slicing up aircraft in mid-air [Sky News].

Image: Institute for Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer

Can an iPhone App Decipher Your Baby’s Cries? | Discoblog

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:55:15 -0800

A new baby translator is now available for your iPhone. It won’t translate your babies gurgles and screams into “lavish attention on me, and entertain me,” or “I want what the cat’s eating,” but the inventors claim the app will analyze your baby’s cries and tell you roughly what the little one is trying to say.

According to Fox News:

The Cry Translator uses patented technology to analyze the tone and duration of the cries and match them to one of five possible types: hungry, sleepy, annoyed, stressed or bored.

No, the translator wasn’t built by Herb Powell (of the memorable Simpsons episode), but rather by Spanish developer Biloop Technologic. The developer claims that the app was shown to be 90 percent accurate in clinical trials, although they don’t say if these trials were published in a scientific journal (so presumably not). However, if your wailing baby befuddles you, or if you want to be an obnoxious back-seat parent, you can pick up the translator for $9.99.

Image: engadget

Brain-Like Chip May Solve Computers' Big Problem: Energy

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:10:00 -0800

Kwabena Boahen is working to create a computer that will fulfill his boyhood vision—a new kind of computer, based not on the regimented order of traditional silicon chips but on the organized chaos of the human brain. Designing this machine will mean rejecting everything that we have learned over the past 50 years about building computers. But it might be exactly what we need to keep the information revolution going for another 50. The human brain runs on only about 20 watts of power, equal to the dim light behind the pickle jar in your refrigerator. By contrast, the computer on your desk consumes a million times as much energy per calculation. If you wanted to build a robot with a processor as smart as the human brain, it would require 10 to 20 megawatts of electricity. “Ten megawatts is a small hydroelectric plant,” Boahen says dismissively. “We should work on miniaturizing hydroelectric plants so we can put them on the backs of robots.” You would encounter similar problems if you tried to build a medical implant to replace just 1 percent of the neurons in the brain, for use in stroke patients. That implant would consume as much electricity as 200 households and dissipate as much heat as the engine in a Porsche Boxster. “Energy efficiency isn’t just a matter of elegance. It fundamentally limits what we can do with computers,” Boahen says. Despite the amazing progress in electronics technology—today’s transistors are 1/100,000 the size that they were a half century ago, and computer chips are 10 million times faster—we still have not made meaningful progress on the energy front. And if we do not, we can forget about truly intelligent humanlike machines and all the other dreams of radically more powerful computers.

Musical, Fahrvergnügen-Inspired Staircase Makes Commuters Less Lazy | Discoblog

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:31:03 -0800

It’s tough to get people to make healthier decisions about the way they live their lives. Public health officials have tried for decades to stem the obesity epidemic by getting people to exercise more, but all their tactics–lecturing, scolding, scaring, informing, inspiring, empowering–have had very little effect.

But at a subway station in Stockholm, a band of inventive social engineers had amazing results when they decided to get commuters off the escalators and onto the stairs. They asked themselves, “Can we get more people to choose the stairs by making it fun to do?” And then they turned the staircase into a piano keyboard, complete with black and white keys.

The project was part of a larger initiative sponsored by Volkswagen called “The Fun Theory,” which aims to prove that people will change their behavior for the better if you let them have a little fun in the bargain. Have you pulled off a similar trick? Tell Volkswagen about it and you can win more than $4,000.

Video: Volkswagen

Inspired by Maple Seeds, a Robotic Whirligig Takes To The Skies | Discoblog

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:00:21 -0800

Introducing the maple-seed-inspired Ulrich flyer, the world’s first controllable robotic monocopter. The monocopter’s inventors studied the way a maple seed whirls and twirls as it falls to the ground, and designed their flyer based on that biological blueprint. In this video, watch the little aircraft rise through the air with its single blade spinning furiously–accompanied by an epic soundtrack that ranges from techno to symphonic grandeur.

Invented at the University of Maryland’s Aerospace Engineering Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory and Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center, the small and capable craft meets most of the challenges set forth by DARPA’s nano-air-vehicle program. The program asks engineers to invent ultra-lightweight vehicles that could come in handy for urban military missions.

Read more about the copter over at Physorg.com.

Video: YouTube / RoboSeed

Beam is Back! The LHC Restarts | Cosmic Variance

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:18:05 -0700

This past weekend saw the first beam particles in the LHC since the magnet quench incident of September 2008. Protons and lead ions were threaded in two directions around part of the ring before being dumped, and everything worked without a hitch. The graphs show the ion beam spot entering Collision Point 2 before being dumped.

The LHC machine commissioning will pick up where it left off more than a year ago, and the plan is, if all goes well, to collide beams of protons in the experiments at a center of mass energy of 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) before the end of the year. The luminosity will not be large at first, but should increase steadily with time until next fall, when the long shutdown to retrofit the remaining magnets with new quench detection and helium pressure relief systems begins. By that point the experiments hope to have accumulated upwards of 200 pb^-1 of integrated luminosity. This initial data sample is sorely needed to shake down the detectors and start tuning up the event reconstruction and analysis. And who knows, maybe we’ll see something totally unexpected. (Please, no black hole comments!)

The next main milestone will be beam circulating around the whole ring and captured by the RF system. That should happen by mid-November. Fingers crossed!

Visual Science: A Stimulating View

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:15:00 -0700

Researchers are using a new laser-like technique for looking inside of tissues.

A Wing and a Prayer: The U.S.'s Crumbling Air-Travel Infrastructure

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:35:00 -0700

Nearly 60 percent of the FAA’s control towers have surpassed their expected useful lives of 30 years. They are plagued by water leaks, mold, and foggy windows that can make it difficult to see aircraft, according to a December 2008 audit conducted by the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General. Outdated heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems in some major airports—such as Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway, and even Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, the home of Air Force One—cause condensation to form on windows, hampering controllers’ ability to look out at planes on the field. Yet plumbing and electrical repairs often go undone, resulting in a deferred maintenance backlog of $240 million, a tab that is expected to climb to more than $380 million by 2020. Creaky physical conditions at U.S. airports are reminiscent of those in developing nations. Controllers in Atlanta have had to hold umbrellas over radarscopes to see the planes... When aircraft are traveling at 600 miles an hour, every second counts. “It can take 15 seconds to recognize there’s a problem, 15 seconds to radio instructions to the pilot, and an additional 15 seconds for them to respond,” says Don Brown, who was an air traffic controller in Atlanta for 25 years. “Near midair collisions are like rolling the dice. Once you get within a certain distance, it’s in the hands of God—how well you can see and how fast you can act—as to whether the planes will collide.”

Future Tech: Doctor on-Call? Cell-Phone Cameras Can Diagnose Disease

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:10:00 -0700

Developing nations often have a lack of medical facilities but good cell phones. The CellScope turns the latter into the former.

A Problem for Residents of the Future: Powering Those Futuristic Residences | Science Not Fiction

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:29:19 -0700

S.A.R.A.H. (Self-actuated Residential Automated Habitat), the talking, thinking, usually helpful house on Eureka is such a regular on the show that she could qualify as just another wacky genius in a town full of them. But though she’s smarter than any smart house ever known, she has a bit of a problem: her power source. We’re told that her radioisotope thermoelectric generator supplies plenty of power for energy independence, but these devices only output power at low levels, albeit for a long time, plus they depend on radioactive materials—which is why in real life they’re used on long-lived unmanned probes and satellites.

S.A.R.A.H.’s designer, Douglas Fargo, should take some cues from the Solar Decathlon, a biennial contest hosted by the U.S. Department of energy. This year, representatives from 20 teams have reconstructed their high-tech solar-powered houses on the National Mall in Washington D.C. for inspection by the public and judges alike. (See 80beats’ gallery of some of the houses.) Houses are scored on 10 criteria, from efficient appliances to market-worthiness.

Most of the houses share a few themes: They maximize the insulation to minimize heat and cool loss; they have large sections of walls that can be opened onto decks and patios to increase the amount of livable space in the house; they had ways to access appliances or climate controls remotely, whether from an iPhone app or an Internet connection; and all of them can, at the minimum, operate without electricity from the grid, though many generate excess power.

Each house has been carefully designed to suit their own regional cultures. The team from University of Louisiana, Lafayette produced BeauSoleil, a Cajun-style home that combined energy efficiency with the ability to resist hurricane-strength winds. The Illinois team’s Gable Home fits in with Midwestern farm architecture, and Team California’s Refract House is designed to take full advantage of the sunny but typically mild climate in the southern part of the state.

Team Germany’s house is an austere cube (it is German, after all) with a single large living space on the inside, but covered in solar panels on the outside. Much like S.A.R.A.H., furniture and appliances fold in and out so the room can change function from eating space to social area to sleeping area. The house was designed to maximize the power generating possibilities, and it can pump out twice as much electricity as it needs to operate. The technology is pretty expensive, and the unit cost of the German house was projected to be between $650,000 to $850,000.

Naturally, some of the houses are a little ambitious. The University of Kentucky’s house maintains its internal environment by monitoring weather from a university feed that updates at the zip code-level resolution. The Iowa State house has a vacuum-sealed door, which seems to me would make it challenging to open when salespeople or evangelicals come knocking unexpectedly (then again, maybe that’s not such a bad thing).

All of the houses will be on display through October 18, so Washingtonians and D.C. tourists might consider stopping by to see these would-be S.A.R.A.H.s in the, uh, flesh.

The Era of Nanoparticle Drugs Begins With Erection Cream

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:50:00 -0700

Smaller than viruses, these drug-carrying balls of sugar could deliver any medicine. Researchers are starting with an all-important use: erection cream.

Introducing the Most Efficient Solar Power in the World

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:40:00 -0700

It's taken 25 years, but a new solar-thermal plant in New Mexico has finally broken the old efficiency record.

A Modest Proposal: How to Stop Aging Entirely

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:50:00 -0700

Biologist Aubrey de Grey lays out a plan to stay young forever. Key step: finally winning the war on cancer.

In the Race Between Optical and Magnetic Storage, We Win

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:35:00 -0700

DVD-size disks that hold 10 terabytes. Memory chips that remember even when the power's off.

The Threat to Mt. Wilson | Cosmic Variance

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:18:35 -0700

Some of you may have followed the threat to the historic Mt. Wilson observatory from the fires in Los Angeles earlier this month. Below is a fantastic time lapse video shot from one of the facilities on the mountain. You can see how close the fire came (though thankfully, the firefighters did a superb job in protecting observatory with targeted back burns to create firebreaks around the site).

As this video shows, astronomical observatories are frequently at risk from wildfires, since both tend to occupy dry remote mountaintops. Indeed, close to seven years ago, one of Australia’s major observatories on Mt. Stromlo was nearly obliterated by the fires that raced through the area:

Thankfully, Mt. Wilson survived this round.

PS. You can find a bit more about some of the ground breaking work that was done at Mt. Wilson along with some terrific old Life magazine photos here.

Robots! Clean Your Drives Daily: PSA’s from the Future | Science Not Fiction

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:24:09 -0700

Via Hero Complex come these ingenious public service announcements and travel posters from a near future in which time travel is possible and robots are self-cleaning. Designed by artist Amy Martin, the posters are $20 each and proceeds benefit 826LA, a non-profit writing center for kids 6 to 18.

Can You Feel Me Now? | Science Not Fiction

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:49:48 -0700

Not surprisingly, the latest big trend in communication (social media) has spawned the latest big trend in market research: sentiment analysis, the art/science of using Internet and social media chatter to gauge public feeling about a company.

Consultants like Newssift, ScoutLabs, and Jodange use complex algorithms to scan keywords in remarks about corporations made on Twitter and Facebook, then categorize them as positive or negative via filters—the companies say they can even parse sarcasm, slang, and other linguistic nuances. Filters can sift through levels of positivity/negativity, intensity. Some can also identify more influential opinions from those social-media hubs and tastemakers. As the tech becomes increasingly sophisticated, it may become more prevalent in standard search engines or predict future developments like stock price fluctuations.

Companies are interested in measure online opinion, of course, because the perception of the company or its products can have a strong effect on its chances for success. They’ve also used the approach to sort out technical or customer service glitches.

More casual users who don’t want to sink money into a professional system can tap simpler versions like Tweetfeel, Twendz, and Twitrratr for topic-based opinions.

—Guest-blogger Susan Karlin

Codex Futurius: When Houses Grow on Trees | Science Not Fiction

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:24:59 -0700

Yes. It’s true. After a little summer slow-down, it is time for the return of the Codex Futurius, this blog’s never-ending quest to explore the big science of science fiction. This question on futuristic materials was fielded by Sidney Perkowitz, a physicist at Emory University. Thanks much to Dr. Perkowitz for the solid (ha) info and to Jennifer Ouellette, the director the NAS’ Science and Entertainment Exchange (SEEx) program, for connecting us with him.

Will we use metal in the future? What else would we build things out of? Might we use organic technology (machines and buildings made of or from biological organisms) instead?”
In The Graduate, that iconic film from 1967, bewildered 20-something Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) gets some career advice from a businessman who leans close and intones “I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics.” Benjamin didn’t follow that advice, but the rest of the world did, and in spades. By 1979, global production of plastic had exceeded that of steel and is still growing, reaching over 200 million tons this year. There’s no doubt that plastic will continue to play a major role in how we make things, but it won’t replace everything.

In some ways, plastic is the material of the future, the latest step in humanity’s long upward trek through the ages of stone, bronze, iron, and steel. The word “plastic” comes from Greek roots meaning “capable of being molded.” Compared to metals and other materials, plastic is infinitely versatile. With its ability to shape-shift and to take on different mechanical and optical properties, it shows up in a huge spectrum of applications from packaging and plumbing to toys, medical supplies, and computers. And unlike iron and steel, plastic doesn’t rust.

But plastic also has problems that will prevent it from replacing metals any time soon. Its very durability can be an issue. Discarded plastic objects can survive for centuries in garbage landfills without degrading, and plastic artifacts have been found polluting the oceans far distant from any land. Also, what doesn’t seem to be widely appreciated, the raw material to make plastic comes from a resource we need to conserve, petroleum.

On top of this, metals do some things better than plastic—just try cutting up an apple with a plastic knife. Copper and other metals are needed to conduct electricity through power grids; all plastic can do is insulate the current-carrying wires. However, plastic is making inroads relative to some materials such as wood, which is being replaced by plastic “lumber” in certain applications.

Plastic also offers a possible way to actually construct things using biotechnology. Unlike metals, which are classified as inorganic, plastics are organic; they’re made of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, the same constituents as living things, which links plastic to biological products. For instance, under the right conditions, certain microorganisms can synthesize compounds called polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). These display properties like those of artificial plastics, with the benefits that they’re not petroleum-based and are biodegradable. Researchers are investigating ways to mass-produce these bioplastics, for instance by bioengineering plants to create them.

If you want to speculate even further, way past the idea of growing plastic rather than making it in factories, think about the science-fictionish possibility of bioengineering plants to produce plastic exactly in a desired shape from a drinking cup to a house. Current biotechnology is far short of this possibility, but science fiction has a way of pointing to the future. If bioplastics are the materials breakthrough of the 21st century, houses grown from seeds may be the breakthrough of the 22nd.

Set Your CT Scanner to "Kill" and Look Inside Some Fossils

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:45:00 -0700

Penetrating chunks of amber and ancient rock, powerful new imaging machines render 3-D portraits of fossil creatures concealed for millions of years.

What is This? Spirograph 2.0?

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:45:00 -0700

Hint: It represents a best-selling piece of literature.

Test Drive: Tesla Roadster | Cosmic Variance

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:10:46 -0700

Here at Discover Media LLC, we are dedicated to bringing you news of the cutting-edge technology that will change your life. So we dispatched our Cosmic Variance automotive editor (me) to test-drive the car of the future: the all-electric Tesla Roadster. (No real secret actually; I have a friend who owns the car.) Thus, yesterday’s picture.

Fancy titles notwithstanding, I’m by no means a true car nut, so I can’t offer the insider perspective of a real expert. My take is that of an ordinary person who just had a chance to drive an exotic car through the hills north of San Francisco. After considering the experience carefully, my considered judgment could be expressed as follows: pretty frikkin’ awesome.

Let’s get some basics out of the way: the Tesla, with a body based on the Lotus Elise, is a tiny car — a two-seater with a trunk that can at best be described as decorative. And it’s low to the ground; climbing inside is a bit of a process for the uninitiated. Inside, the electronics are all state-of-the-art (as one might expect), but the Roadster is not a cushy luxury car. It’s not uncomfortable, but you’re not being coddled by piles of plush leather. Removing the convertible soft top is a matter of unsnapping and stowing by hand; takes just a few seconds, but we’re not talking about a top-of-the-line Mercedes where there are separate buttons to stow the top, clean your sunglasses, and freshen your martini. The Tesla experience is about the driving; fripperies are for future incarnations.

So you sit down, turn the key to start the engine, and: nothing. That’s to be expected, and should be familiar to anyone who has driven a Prius or other hybrid. The electric motor doesn’t need to be turning when the car isn’t moving, so turning the vehicle on just means some lights come on. Spooky at first, but you get used to it.

Actually pulling out into the road and driving is a different story. There are basically three things that distinguish the Tesla driving experience from that of your typical Ford Taurus or what have you. First, as you may have heard, the Tesla doesn’t believe in a little thing called a “transmission.” Technically, there is a transmission, but really it’s just a reduction mechanism that translates a certain number of motor revolutions to a certain fixed number of tire revolutions — there are no gears, so there is no shifting, manual or otherwise. The original plans called for a two-speed transmission, but it proved unreliable, so they said screw it, let’s just have one gear. As a result, the rate at which the motor is turning is directly proportional to the rate at which your car is moving. That includes reverse; when you’re backing up, the motor is spinning in the opposite sense from when you’re moving forward. In a conventional car with an automatic transmission, there can be a bit of a delay between when you push down on the accelerator and when you actually accelerate, as the car tries to decide what gear it should be in. No such hesitation in the Tesla.

The second thing, which you may not have heard, is that there is no power steering. I don’t know whether that was a matter of cutting down on weight, or whether it was just thought that power steering wouldn’t be keeping it real. But despite its diminutive profile, the Tesla is not a light car, coming in at about 2,700 pounds — a third of that in the form of batteries. (The Elise, in comparison, is only about 2,000 pounds; but a Mazda Miata comes in at 2,500 pounds and a BMW Z4 at 3,200 pounds, so the Tesla isn’t unreasonable.) To those of us who have gotten used to having the car practically steer for us, the Tesla is a bit of an adjustment. But the adjustment happens quickly, and it’s very much in keeping with the sporty nature of the car — you’re here for performance, not coddling.

The single gear and the lack of power steering combine to create an effect I hadn’t really anticipated before the drive: a visceral connection between the driver and the ground. It’s hard to imagine a driving experience that is on the one hand that fast, and on the other hand features so little mediation between what you do at the controls and how the car responds. The engine turns, and the car zips along, at precisely the speed you tell it to, no more, no less; and the wheels turn at an angle precisely proportional to the attitude of the steering wheel in your hands. You are in control.

And — to come to the third crucial distinguishing feature — you’re in control of a lot. This puppy is fast. By which I do not mean, as physics training might lead you to suspect, that it travels at a high velocity. In fact the car is electronically regulated so that its maximum speed is 125 miles per hour (and I didn’t approach the limit, don’t worry). That’s fine, because despite the emphasis on sportiness, this is a car that is meant to be driven on actual roads with actual traffic laws. But because state legislatures aren’t required to pass any calculus exams, our rules of the road feature speed limits, but not acceleration limits. And it’s really acceleration that gives a car a feeling of being “fast”; when you push down on the accelerator, how quickly do you speed up?

In the Tesla, the answer is: as quickly as you could possibly want to accelerate outside a racetrack. The technical numbers tell us that the Roadster goes from 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds. (A Porsche Boxter does 0-60 in about 5 seconds.) All I can say is, it’s incredibly, breathtakingly fast. Punch it, it’s gone. Only after driving this car did it occur to me that maybe there should be acceleration limits written into the traffic laws; being able to accelerate faster than this strikes me as very plausibly dangerous. Once you adjust to the parameters of the vehicle, the combination of the incredible power and the unmediated response to your actions yields a driving experience that is pretty darn breathtaking.

There are a couple of other idiosyncrasies to remind you that this is not your father’s Oldsmobile. Although the Tesla is utterly silent while standing still, it definitely does make noise while moving. Not very much noise, but what comes to mind is less a Ferrari and more a muffled jet engine. I presume this is because the engine is turning notably faster (perhaps 7,000 RPM at highway speeds, I didn’t check carefully) than in an ordinary car. The other thing is the regenerative powertrain. When you take your foot off the accelerator, the car slows down perceptibly — it’s taking some of your kinetic energy and using it to recharge the batteries. So you don’t need to put on the brakes while going downhill. (Sadi Carnot would have something to say about this, but don’t worry — you’re still creating some entropy, just achieving something closer to theoretically maximal efficiency.)

In other words: the Tesla Roadster is an extremely fun car. But is it practical?

Well, it’s not practical for most of us to actually buy — the sticker price is on the order of $120,000. And you’re not going to take four kids and a dog to the soccer game. Nor are you going to take a road trip across the country; under ordinary driving conditions, the Tesla gets about 200 miles between charges.

But all that is okay. The vast majority of driving is not done on long hauls or with a car packed full of people; it’s done by a single person on relatively short jaunts. For those purposes — commuting to work, running errands, going to meet friends — something like the Roadster is just about perfect. There’s no reason to lug around two tons of car with room for six when there’s only a driver inside. Very few people would want a Tesla as their only car, but if they had two cars, it would be the one they were driving most of the time. And if you can afford to buy the thing in the first place, you can afford another car.

More importantly, in its current incarnation the Tesla is not about practicality; it’s a proof of concept. Electric cars have long suffered under the image of being under-powered and super-short range, needing to return home every 50 miles for a lengthy recharge. The Tesla blows those stereotypes out of the water, and that was the idea. Here is a car that is environmentally conscious, but is no sacrifice once you’re behind the wheel. It proves that an electric car can have a decent range and be easily recharged. And let’s face it — it’s hot.

Not that it is quite plug-and-play. The Tesla is powered by an array of about 7,000 lithium-ion batteries, not too different from what you have in your laptop computer (but with special care taken to ensure long life, no overheating, and no explosions). You could, in principle, plug the recharger into an ordinary 110 volt outlet already in your home; problem is, a complete recharge would take about 30 hours. (If you’re only driving about 30 miles a day, you wouldn’t need anywhere near a complete recharge.) If you’ve gone this far, however, you probably want to install a 220-volt receptacle; most homes are already wired for the increased voltage, but you have to spend a hundred bucks to install the appropriate unit. Now the car can be fully recharged in about 3 1/2 hours. In other words: come home, plug it in overnight, drive away the next morning.

Of course, even if we all were driving Teslas, the world would not suddenly transform into a green utopia. That electricity has to come from somewhere, and right now it mostly comes from burning dirty fossil fuels like coal. I’ve read that, under the current setup, driving a mile in a Tesla is just a little bit better in terms of total carbon emissions than driving in an ordinary car; you’re using less energy, but it’s coming from a dirtier source.

The system is going to have to change. We can’t keep burning petroleum in our individual cars, nor can we keep burning coal to get our electricity. The point is that it’s fairly easy to see how to get electricity form sources other than coal — we’ll need a portfolio of nuclear, solar, wind, etc. But the cars are going to have to go electric, there’s little question about that. (Believe Steve Chu if you don’t believe me.) A major challenge is going to be upgrading the electrical-power transmission grid; T. Boone Pickens recently had to abandon an ambitious plan to build a giant wind farm in Texas, after he realized that he didn’t have the resources to carry the power to the people who actually wanted to use it. But doing that upgrade is not optional, and it’s a matter of willpower rather than technological breakthrough.

Tesla obviously isn’t the only company that’s caught on to the promise of electric cars, although the Roadster currently blows away the competition in terms of speed, acceleration, and range. The much-hyped Chevy Volt from GM is actually a plug-in hybrid, which includes an internal combustion engine to help the electric motor along when you want to go fast or far. That may be the wave of the near future, but I suspect that 100% electric is the medium-term solution. (Until we all have personal jetpacks, or the Singularity arrives.)

Still, it would be nice to have a car more people could afford, and which could hold a couple of friends and/or offspring as well as the driver and a single lucky passenger. Behold: the Tesla Model S. Scheduled for first delivery in late 2011, this will be a true four-dour sedan, with a range of up to 300 miles. Still not cheap; estimated cost is around $60,000. But that’s completely competitive with executive-class sedans from Mercedes, BMW, or Audi. The Model S won’t put an electric car in everyone’s garage, but it will help “normalize” the idea of owning one — you’ll start seeing them on the streets in increasing numbers. And after that, there are hopes to offer another model for less than $30,000. Still not cheap, but getting there.

The future belongs to electricity. The good news is, it’s a pretty sexy future.

Astronaut? | Cosmic Variance

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:43:36 -0700

“Astronaut”

Doesn’t that word conjure up the majesty of space exploration? The triumph of human drive and ingenuity?

Or perhaps, it makes you think of an automated laser-guided milking machine?

Seriously. Wrap your mind around that. “Automated laser-guided milking machine”.

Cow walks in when it decides it’s ready to be milked. Sensors read a tag around the cow’s neck to determine if the cow is indeed ready to be milked. If so, the machine launches a veritable Pink Floyd Lasarium around the udder, locating the teats, which are then cleaned and hooked up to the milking units. Sensors then disconnect when the milk flow drops, and the cow goes on its way.

Lasers and cows. Two fine things that I never thought I’d see together.

(and below, an informative video, if you really, really care)

In the Future, Doing Science Is Like Blogging

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:45:00 -0700

Fiction from Bruce Sterling: "You bet you can, and that’s why we’re so glad you’re at our Web site! If you can read a popular-science publication (and enjoy it), then you most likely have enough brainpower to help us make massive scientific breakthroughs..."

9 Ways Carbon Nanotubes Just Might Rock the World

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:20:00 -0700

Nanotubes have been billed as the key to curing cancer, building space elevators, and creating real-world Spidermen. Whether they're totally tubular or just an overhyped pipe dream remains to be seen.

Shadow Life

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:40:00 -0700

In the post-economic future, big-ticket science is dead and amateurs hunt aliens using gear scored cheap on eBay.

Torchwood: Eyeball Cameras II | Science Not Fiction

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 08:15:46 -0700

I finally got around to watching Torchwood: Children of Earth this weekend.

[MINOR SPOILER ALERT]

Wow. Bleak. Maybe I shouldn’t have watched all five episodes in one afternoon, but I haven’t been this depressed since Dark Knight. What happened to the randy, swashbuckling Captain Jack that we loved?

On the SciNoFi front though, Torchwood gives us the opportunity to revisit the topic of eyeball spy cameras, last seen in an episode of Dollhouse this spring. As Stephen noted in a post at that time, scientists have been working on plugging directly into the brain (in cats at least) to locate and interpret visual processing activity.

Interestingly, the Torchwood contact lenses appeared to be a much more basic technology: essentially small video cameras that could transmit images back to a laptop and also display text messages to the wearer.

Given how far we have to go in understanding the brain, a contact lens camera is probably a more straightforward and only marginally more detectable solution for this kind of surveillance. Eyeball sized cameras are already commercially available.

Comic-Con 2009: Mad Science Panel Video | Science Not Fiction

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:41:54 -0700

For those of you who couldn’t make it to San Diego last week, Discovermagazine.com and the National Academy of Sciences’ Science & Entertainment Exchange present our panel discussion on “Mad Science,” featuring Jaime Paglia (co-Executive Producer of Eureka), Kevin Grazier (Battlestar Galactica and Eureka science adviser), Jane Espenson (Dollhouse, Battlestar, Caprica, and lots more), Ricardo Gil da Costa (science adviser for Fringe), and Rob Chiappetta and Glenn Whitman (writers for Fringe).

If you don’t have time to watch the video you can read recaps and quotes from the panel here, here, here, here and here.

Big thanks to Jennifer at SEE, to all of our panelists, and to the Bad Astronomer, who found time to moderate our panel while he wasn’t partying with Hollywood starlets (Phil – we kid because we love).